by Nic Saint
Not exactly our finest hour, I will readily confess.
Gran, who noticed that we were all looking downcast, decided to bring us out of our slump and suggested we ride with her and Scarlett tonight, as part of her usual neighborhood watch routine, and we gratefully accepted her kindhearted proposal.
And so we found ourselves in Marge’s little red Peugeot, which Gran likes to use as her patrol car, cruising along the deserted streets of Hampton Cove, with Gran behind the wheel and Scarlett riding shotgun. Four cats were ensconced in the backseat, and generally I felt that things were gradually returning to a semblance of normalcy.
“Good thing we’re old,” said Gran. “And that we don’t need a lot of sleep. A young person could never do what we do. They’d need their eight hours of uninterrupted beauty sleep.”
“Speak for yourself,” said Scarlett. “I’m not old.”
“We’re exactly the same age, Scarlett,” Gran pointed out.
“Age is in the eye of the beholder,” said her friend.
“I think that’s beauty.”
“That, too.”
Gran turned back to us. “You guys are awfully quiet,” she remarked.
“How would you feel if you suddenly found yourself responsible for your human’s nervous breakdown,” said Scarlett. She turned to face us, which in her case was a lot less fraught with danger because she wasn’t driving the car. “You shouldn’t worry,” she said. “I’m sure it’s just the usual wedding jitters. Nothing to do with you.”
“I think it has everything to do with us,” said Harriet. “If we hadn’t told Odelia that we weren’t going to be present at the wedding, she wouldn’t have had her nervous breakdown. So excuse us for feeling bad, all right?”
“What did they just say?” asked Scarlett, turning to Gran with a smile. “It sounds so cute when they do all the meowing. Almost as if they’re actually talking to me.”
“They are actually talking to you,” said Gran. “They feel bad for telling Odelia they didn’t want to attend the wedding, and they feel guilty about her nervous breakdown.”
“Oh, the poor dears,” said Scarlett, fussing over us for a bit before turning back to face the front and presumably being on the lookout for prowlers and burglars and drug dealers and murderers and those other strange and terrifying creatures of the night.
“You shouldn’t feel bad,” said Gran. “It wasn’t your fault that Odelia suffered that sudden breakdown. It’s not the fact that you said you weren’t going to be there, though it may have expedited things a little.”
“If it wasn’t us, then what caused her breakdown?” I asked.
“Mainly the fact that it now looks as if hundreds of people will show up for the wedding, turning it into the social event of the season, maybe even the year or the decade, and that’s exactly the kind of thing she was desperate to avoid.”
“How many people are going?” asked Harriet, casting a worried glance in my direction. Privately she’d expressed her doubts about Gran’s guarantees in regards to that spot next to the altar. She had a feeling even that spot would be overrun with people. If the worst came to the worst we could always claw our way out, of course, but I don’t think Odelia would appreciate it when we started mauling her guests and ripping them to pieces.
“Well, the way Odelia’s phone kept ringing off the hook… we’re probably looking at a thousand right now? Maybe a little more?”
“A thousand people!” Harriet cried.
“Is that a lot of people, Max?” asked Dooley.
“Yes, Dooley,” I said. “A thousand people at a wedding is a lot.”
“Too much!” said Harriet.
“I happen to agree with you,” said Gran. “Also, most of these people expect to be invited to the reception and the wedding dinner, which will probably bankrupt us.”
“Not to mention that you will have one angry caterer if you let in more people than originally contracted for,” Scarlett pointed out.
“Just the bottles of champagne we’ll be expected to serve at the wedding reception will probably put a serious dent in our family coffers,” said Gran.
“So what are you going to do?” Scarlett asked. “Call the whole thing off?”
“Well…” said Gran with a shrug.
Scarlett gasped in shock. “You’re not seriously thinking about calling off the wedding, are you? That would send a huge shockwave through the entire community!”
“It’s not exactly up to me, Scarlett. I’m not the one getting married. The final decision lies with Odelia and Chase. But if I were her…”
“You’d call it quits.”
“Things have gotten completely out of hand, that’s pretty obvious. So either we allow things to proceed as planned, and go bust, or we start limiting the number of people we can conceivably cater to, and risk antagonizing the entire population of this town and become personae non grata as a family, or… we simply call off the wedding and save our sanity, our financial situation, and our standing in the community.”
“If you call off the wedding your standing will take a big hit.”
“Not as big a hit as when the wedding turns into a complete disaster.”
“The main thing is that Odelia is happy,” said Dooley. “This is supposed to be the happiest day of her life, and if she’s going to be crying all the time, that’s not good.”
“No, I guess not,” said Harriet. “Instead of the happiest day of her life, it will turn into the worst day of her life.”
“I think Odelia should elope,” said Brutus. “What?” he added when all eyes turned to him—except Gran’s, as she was obligated, at least part of the time, to keep her eyes on the road—and Scarlett’s, since she couldn’t understand what we were saying.
“Elope!” cried Harriet. “What do you mean? You mean like run away from home?”
“No, just go to Vegas or one of those places where you can get an instant wedding and get it over with. She’s been talking about getting married for so long now, frankly I think she should just get it over with already so we can forget about the whole thing.”
“Brutus!” said Harriet looking shocked. “What an idea!”
“It’s a good idea,” he argued. “She’ll finally be married, it won’t cost her a thing—except the trip to Vegas and the hotel and whatever it costs to get the guy to dress up like Elvis and give them their blessing, and no one will be able to blame the family, as they’ll all point to Odelia and Chase and simply call it the folly of youth.”
“Odelia and Chase are not that young,” Harriet argued.
“Young enough to pull it off.”
Gran was smiling, I noticed. “I like your thinking, Brutus,” she said. “In fact I was thinking along the same lines myself, to be honest.”
“You were?” said Brutus.
“Only I don’t think Odelia is quite there yet.”
“Or Chase,” I said. “He probably isn’t quite there yet either.”
“Oh, I’m pretty sure Chase is with me,” said Gran.
“With you on what?” asked Scarlett. “What are you talking about?”
“Brutus suggests that the best course of action would be for Odelia and Chase to have a quickie wedding in Vegas. No muss, no fuss.”
Scarlett laughed. “You gotta be kidding!”
“Nope. I’m even willing to spring for the whole thing, if she decides to pull the trigger.”
“You know what? If you can convince her to go through with this, I’ll chip in.”
“Deal,” said Gran, and held up her hand for a high five, which Scarlett promptly delivered.
And since the cat contingency in the backseat didn’t want to be left out, we all put our paws together too. We wouldn’t exactly be able to chip in. Financially, I mean. Since cats aren’t big fans of opening a bank account—or carrying wallets, for that matter. But the prospect of a wedding without the distinct possibility of being trampled by a raucous crowd of hundreds sounded very appealing to me. Though I wasn�
��t altogether sure about the Elvis costume. I might have to put my paw down on that part of the plan.
Chapter 27
“What did you think? Of the speech?” asked Charlene. She’d been reading in bed and now put her book down and took off her reading glasses.
Next to her, Alec also took off his glasses. He’d been reading about what constitutes the best type of fishing tackle.
“I thought your speech was wonderful, honey,” he said. “You held them all spellbound, like you usually do.”
“I thought Lord Hilbourne was pretty good, too. Well received, I thought.”
“Uh-huh,” said Alec with a marked lack of enthusiasm.
“What? You didn’t like his speech?”
“It was okay, I guess,” he said with a shrug.
“Okay? He had them all eating out of the palm of his hand. He wowed the crowd and gave them everything they came for and more.”
“Like I said, he was okay. I’ve heard better speeches,” said Alec, continuing to be noncommittal.
Charlene, fair-haired and a couple of years Alec’s junior, looked over to her partner, a half-smile playing on her lips. “You don’t like him, do you? You really don’t like the guy.”
“I don’t dislike him,” said Alec with a shrug.
“What don’t you like about him?” asked Charlene, who wasn’t fooled by this evasiveness. In the few months they’d been dating, and now that they’d practically moved in together, even though they still kept their own places for now, she’d gotten to know her man pretty well. She could tell he was holding something back, and was a little embarrassed about it, too.
“Look, he’s fine,” said Alec. “Like I said, I don’t like him, I don’t dislike him. I’m neutral, all right? I’m Switzerland.”
“Yeah, right, “said Charlene with a low chuckle. She took Alec’s arm and rubbed it affectionately. “Is my favorite chief of police a little jealous, perhaps?”
“I’m not jealous,” Alec grunted immediately, but he said it with such vehemence Charlene knew she’d hit pay dirt.
“You are jealous!”
“I just don’t understand why the guy had to hang around you so much. Laughing, touching your arm all the time, rubbing your back, whispering in your ear…”
“Alec Lip!”
“Flirting, okay! He was flirting with you!”
“Well, I guess maybe he was. He does that with all the girls. Just the way he is.”
“Well, I don’t like it,” Alec grumbled.
Charlene smiled and placed a tender kiss on his cheek. “Oh, you big grumpy bear.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t help it. When I see a guy like that—all floppy-haired and handsome and clever and… and fit!”
“He is fit,” Charlene agreed. “And he does have nice hair.”
“It just annoys the hell out of me, all right? I just wanted to…” He balled his hands into fists.
“You wanted to punch his lights out?”
Alec displayed the first hint of a smile in an evening in which he’d said precious little. Charlene now understood why. She’d thought he was too preoccupied with the murder case he was handling, but apparently it was Lord Hilbourne who’d gotten under his skin and not Bob Rector.
“Yes, I wanted to punch his lights out,” he confirmed. “And muss up his perfect hair.”
“You know?” said Charlene as she pecked a sweet kiss on her boyfriend’s cheek. “I think that’s kinda sexy.”
He gave her a quick sideways glance. “You do, do you?”
“Yeah, that my man would fight for me like that.”
“I can still knock his block off,” Alec suggested. “I happen to know where he lives.”
“I’ll bet you do,” said Charlene with a laugh. “You and half this town know where he lives. But I think you’d better not do any knocking of any blocks. At least not tonight. Can you promise me that?”
“Yeah, I guess I can,” said Alec a little reluctantly.
“And I can promise you that I have absolutely no feelings for the man apart from a general sense of gratitude that he made me look good in front of my entire constituency.”
“All right,” said Alec. “I can accept that.”
“I knew you would.”
And so Alec resumed his study of fishing tackle and Charlene, still smiling, picked up her own reading material again and proceeded to educate herself on the ins and outs of the new sewage system being proposed for the Northern section of Stanwyck Street.
And the newly united couple would have spent another comfortable half hour before going to sleep, if not suddenly the Chief’s and the Mayor’s phones both had started to chime, and both partners shared a look of alarm.
Our patrol had been a very relaxed affair. So far no suspicious activity or suspicious persons had been detected, and it looked as if soon another vigil would come to a successful conclusion. I was frankly eager to head down to the park and join cat choir, and I think I can speak for all of us when I say that the others, too, felt like enjoying a few hours of harmless musical fun in the company of our many feline friends—and maybe even a few canine ones, too.
Unfortunately the night suddenly took a different turn. I guess that’s what happens when you ride with the watch: things have a tendency to go bump in the night when you least expect them to.
We were driving past Main Street at the time—Gran employs a very loose definition of the term neighborhood when determining her nighttime patrols. Secretly I think she sees it as encompassing the entire territory of Hampton Cove, which would probably make it a town watch instead of a neighborhood watch in my opinion.
And just as we slowly drove past the General Store, operated by that ex-member of the watch Wilbur Vickery, suddenly a police siren could be heard, and the blue flashing light of a police car loomed up behind us, illuminating our faces and the inside of the car.
“Damn, something’s happened,” said Gran, “and they didn’t tell us about it!”
“I told you we should invest in a police scanner,” said Scarlett.
“You don’t ‘invest’ in a police scanner, Scarlett. Only the police are allowed to have their cars equipped with a police radio—not us mere civilians.”
“So can’t you hack into one? I’ve seen plenty of crime shows where the bad guys listen in on the police radio.”
“Pretty sure that’s illegal.”
“When has that stopped you before?”
“We’re the neighborhood watch. We’re supposed to stop crime, not commit it!”
“Oh, tosh. We’d only use it to stop crime so that’s a good thing, right?”
Gran wisely decided to leave this discussion on the table for now, for the police car had pulled over in front of the Hampton Cove Star hotel, and so Gran immediately pulled up behind it.
“Something’s going on at the hotel!” Scarlett said, seemingly forgetting we were all right there with her, and could determine what was going on for ourselves.
“Let’s go,” said Gran, and promptly exited the vehicle.
We all followed her example and got out of the car.
“Did I tell you that I saw Johnny Carew today?” asked Scarlett as we crossed the street and hurried in the direction of the hotel.
“You saw Johnny Carew? Where?”
“He was looking at me from one of those windows up there.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me?!”
“I didn’t think it was important.”
“Wherever Johnny is, Jerry usually isn’t far behind. And wherever he is, a crime is usually in progress!”
“I thought they’d reformed?”
“Do pigs fly?”
“Ha!”
“Do pigs fly, Max?” asked Dooley, highly intrigued by this peculiar question.
“It’s an expression, Dooley,” I explained. “Pigs don’t fly, and Johnny and Jerry will probably never reform.”
“But what do flying pigs have to do with Johnny and Jerry refo
rming?” Dooley wanted to know.
But luckily we’d arrived at the hotel, and made our way inside, following in Gran and Scarlett’s footsteps. Soon we found ourselves in the lobby, and saw two cops enter the elevator and get whisked away before we could stop them and ask if we could join.
Gran hurried over to the reception desk and proceeded to take out a self-made laminated badge. She flashed it in front of the receptionist’s face. “Hampton Cove Neighborhood Watch,” she said curtly. “I understand you reported a crime?”
“Um…” said the receptionist, who was a young man liberally endowed with a smattering of pimples on his youthful face. “Oh,” he said, as that face suddenly cleared. “I know you. You’re the hot chocolate with extra cream and plenty of marshmallows. And you—the espresso, extra strong with a side order of petits fours and miniature pastry.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Gran. “Cut the crap and tell us what’s going on, sonny boy.”
“Oh, Lord Hilbourne has been abducted,” said the kid. “And judging from the pool of blood we found in his room, there’s a good chance that he was brutally murdered.”
Chapter 28
Odelia had been sleeping restlessly, dreaming of being suffocated by a braying crowd, when all of a sudden her phone started to belt out a loud tune and she groaned as she grabbed it from the nightstand. Immediately, as if in symphony with hers, Chase’s phone started singing its own song, waking up the burly cop and sending him groping for the device. Simultaneously they both spoke, “Yes?”
The voice that sounded in Odelia’s ear was her grandmother’s, who announced, “Better get over here, honey. Lord Hilbourne has gone missing—probably kidnapped.”
And as Odelia glanced over to Chase, it was obvious that he’d just received the same message, for he asked, “Where is here?”
“The Star hotel,” answered her grandmother, as if she’d heard Chase’s question, which probably she had.
Both future husband and wife hung up and then, as if they’d rehearsed the scene, swung their feet from the bed and started to get dressed. Moments later they were out the door, and, like a well-oiled team, were in Chase’s squad car and hurtling along the road in the direction of the downtown area.
